The Book of Film and Meaning

Film & Meaning is concerned with the intersection of film and philosophy. Ian Douglas builds his own theory of meaning by bringing his prodigious knowledge of cinema to bear upon philosophies of meaning and interpretation. He argues points of philosophy with Wittgenstein, Peirce, Wilden and other maintream philosophers of meaning in order to construct his integrative theory of meaning which takes into account film and literary theory.

Ian Douglas died on 15th April 1983 after a long illness. Film & Meaning is offered as a memorial to him and a token of appreciation for his thought. Colleagues and fellow students alike at Murdoch University will always be grateful to him for his contributions to topics in Film Theory and the Philosophy of Language.

This book is based upon Ian's PhD thesis entitled Discourse, Diegesis & the Real: An Integrative Theory of Meaning. Stanley Cavell, who examined this thesis, praised it by saying that in his thirty years of teaching he had "never received a PhD dissertation of the magnitude of ambition and the exhaustiveness of execution of Ian Douglas's". Despite being ill Ian worked on his doctoral dissertation with determination and great courage. Shortly before his death he passed the handwritten manuscript of the thesis over to his supervisor, Horst Ruthrof. Over the next three years Horst worked from this manuscript and the author's rough notes to put his writings first into a thesis form and then into its current book form.

For their help in completing the project a number of people need to be thanked. Thanks are particularly due to Mrs Patricia Douglas for books and hand-written materials from her late husband's library. Gratitude is also extended to the School of Humanties at Murdoch University for making clerical assistance and text processing facilities available. Both Patrick Fuery and Ms Elizabeth Robertson lent valuable assistance by checking footnotes and quotations. Cynthia Baker typed the thesis from a hand-written original which was not always easy to decipher. A special word of thanks must go to her for her patient entering of corrections and variae lectiones of a difficult and complex text.

Film & Meaning is the result of suggestions by Tom O'Regan and Alec McHoul to turn Ian's thesis into a book. Over the summer vacation the thesis has been considerably shortened, edited, reformatted, typeset, and marketed by Alec McHoul, Tom O'Regan and the editor. We have published the book in association with Continuum: An Australian Journal of the Media and the Film & Television Institute (WA). Continuum is proud to be involved in this venture. Hopefully it will be the first of a number of specialist books on film and TV published from Perth. Finally we would like to express our thanks to Murdoch University, the Film & Television Institute (WA) and the History and Film Association of Australia (WA) for their financial assistance without which this book would not have been possible.